


Cold Hammer, Cold Silver

by OtoRose



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Blacksmith Making An Engagement Present for Her Fiancee, Danger, F/F, Leviathan - Freeform, Pirates, Rarest Pair, Romance, You can't tell me they don't love each other, rarepair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtoRose/pseuds/OtoRose
Summary: A forgemaster works through the most difficult night of her life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoeGMiller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeGMiller/gifts).



Saw away the ingot. Pull. Breathe. Pull. Breathe.

Huge iron chains, each the link the size of a man, shrieked in metal as they hauled up the bellows-doors. Warm sea-salt air rushed upwards through the materia-studded vent shafts, across the primed, glowing coals, and the forges roared to life.  No mere corner blacksmith’s – tonight the fires would be straining, forging iron into wrought hull plating. They would be shaping steel into pieces of the containment system for the largest shipment of corrupted crystals ever imagined by anyone not completely bent on destroying half of the continent.  They would be rolling brass into eloquently engraved plaques reading “Naldiq & Vymelli’s: Finest Smithing, Shipwright, & Weaponry” to be riveted to large explosive munitions just long enough to cool before being blown into eloquently engraved pieces. 

Far above, in a lit room in a lonely garret above the foundry, a hammer rang out.

It was really more goldsmith work, any self-respecting blacksmith’d laugh at you and then spit when you asked.  But you couldn’t ask a goldsmith to do it – Serendipity would smile and the thing’d come back all elegantly wrought and bejeweled and what’d even be the bleeding point?

The Maelstrom fleet, to a woman, had its origins in piracy.  Sailors might bring superstitions aplenty to bear but pirates lived by their wits and their skills, or they didn’t. Pirates didn’t sail into the jaws of danger clutching talismans or saying prayers. Pirates found solace in readiness, not in sugar-stories.

Why wasn’t she downstairs, then?

Cold hammer, cold silver.

An apprentice foolish enough to barge in on her might assume it was an anchor, or a dolphin, or some other symbolically nautical design.

No apprentice was that foolish. Every apprentice knew where she was, and none were stupid enough to trade their lives for knowledge of what she did in the garret.

Serendipity wouldn’t have known how to put an edge on silver, either. Not that silver would hold an edge, or that the edge it held would be any good. But after tonight its edge wouldn’t matter.

She’d begged her not to go.

She was Naldiq & Vymelli’s finest. She _was_ Naldiq  & Vymelli’s. The plaques on the cannon might as well have read “Forgemaster H’naanza: Finest Arms, Armor, & Bleeding Idiot.”

Naldiq & Vymelli’s finest gripped the small cross-pein hammer and made the most important thing she’d ever made in her life.  Each muted ring off of the tiny anvil echoed out into the night, only to be swallowed like the sea by the booms and belches of the furnaces below.

In the high, thin air, it was almost cool. Strange to work without sweating. But this wasn’t smithing. This was the opposite of smithing.

The Storm Commander had been adamant. “She has my sword, ’till sea swallows all.” The Oath. Could have bent steel around her stare. She’d been giving the Oath since the Seventh Umbral Era. It meant something. It meant everything. She was one of the first to take it.

It meant now. Now the sea was swallowing all. It meant she could not turn away, not from this, no matter what.

“To the last drop of blood.”

She was going.

“I will follow the Admiral to the very bottom of the Abyss.”

The Oath didn’t say anything about coming back.

The smoked lenses she wore protected her from more than the heat and spark of the forge. Vision blurred; she blinked the momentary haze away, and she rang the sound once more into the night. She couldn’t hear it, but she felt it; time in the forge had dulled her ears, but her sight was good. Perfect. It didn’t blur. It couldn’t, not now.

She would have gone with her, to sea, to be swallowed, but she could not hear.

A swing of the hammer; a rush of air; a dull ring.

Rhiki had to know she could not stop the sea from swallowing all, no matter how many oaths she swore.

Swing, rush, ring.  She could not hear them, but she felt them.

H’naanza knew she could not stop the sea from swallowing all, no matter how many sheets she bent, no matter how many cannon she cast, no matter how many nights she spent alone in her garret.

Arm, breath, heart.

The task of stopping the sea belonged to another, in whose hands their fates rested.

Arm, breath, heart.

H’naanza could only swing, breathe, beat, swing, breathe, beat, swing, breathe, beat.

Arm, breath, heart.

H’naanza’s very best, if she was lucky, could bring Rhiki home.

Edge. Haft. Weight was off, she could fix that – but not much. But it was silver. You only get one shot with silver, or you have to start over. Nobody tonight would get more than one shot.

It wasn’t a pirate tradition, not exactly. It wasn’t a superstition. But if you gave someone a gift before a voyage, you gave them a gift that would keep them safe, that would ensure they sailed back.

Rhiki wouldn’t need a weapon, she would need a tool. Something small. Something with heft, with an edge. Something for cutting, for digging, for diving. Something for close quarters, for ropes.

Something that, properly used, could save her life when axe and sword were useless.

Something that shone, that wouldn’t leave her side. Something to remind her the sea would not swallow all. Something cold in her hand, that would warm to her touch as she held it.

Something she could make into something new, something precious, when its edge was no longer needed.

You couldn’t bleeding trust Serendipity with that.

The final stroke rang off of the anvil.  She buffed the thing down, ground on an edge, solved away the firelime until it gleamed. It was inelegant, inefficient, impractical. It would not have been made by any practical smith. It was hastily created under desperate circumstances and shone bright as day in the low lamplight.

She would be on board the Whorleater. She would be at Rhiki’s side.

She wrapped the silver knife tight in rough broadcloth – it was a plea, not a celebration. The bundle was taken to the Maelstrom barracks and left with the quartermaster, with no message. Rhiki would know.

 

H’naanza sighed deep, and her tail twitched, and, as the sun began to rise over the horizon, she drew the shaded lenses off of her brow, and down over glimmering eyes once more. Her eyes were good. Have to keep them that way; can't let the sea salt air take them from her.

Damned sea.

Twelve more hours. She had finished the most important piece she would ever make. All that remained was to create the loathsome thing that would save the world.

She blinked away the haze again. Bleeding sea was going to swallow her eyes first, at this rate.

Activity ceased the moment she stepped through the massive lower double doors and entered the foundry.  The joists and cladding for the Whorleater laid in disarray, half finished. Pig iron was strewn in tonzes on the staging floor.  Great assembly hooks hung empty overhead. 

“Messrs. Naldiq & Vymelli are not here to see this travesty, but I bleeding well am! This ship is going to be carrying the most valuable and volatile payload of any vessel that has ever sailed, and so we - you, me, and the rest of us here at the finest foundry in Eorzea - are going to get it cracking right on the first try, because we only get the one, and we **do not have time** for chocoboplay! Do you understand?”

She turned away before the response. She couldn’t have heard it, but she could feel it, and in any case she knew what it would be.

Forgemaster H’naanza: Bleeding Idiot began giving orders.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a challenge, with a writing prompt and generous encouragement from a kind and lovely friend.
> 
> H'naanza goes through this literally every time you queue for duty finder. Be kind.


End file.
